Dame Sibyl Hathaway

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs archive.

Speaker 10:05

This edition of Desert Island Discs was archived without the music, so although the Castaways' choices are introduced, they're not part of this recording.

Speaker 10:16

Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Disc's website.

Speaker 10:21

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy one.

Presenter0:37

As usual, the castaway is introduced by Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:42

Our castaway this week is the Dame of Sark, Dame Sybil Hathaway.

Presenter0:47

Now, Dame Sybil, obviously you're at home on an island, but not an island as small as ours. Could you endure loneliness, do you think?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway0:53

Oh, very well, I think. I've been used to it many times in my life.

Presenter0:57

What do you think would be the one big consolation, if there is one, to being alone on a desert hagen?

Presenter1:03

I think having complete silence.

Presenter1:05

Is music important in your life, at times when you didn't want complete silence?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway1:10

No, I think music is important when one's in certain moods, that then one wants it, I think.

Presenter1:15

Do you play in a

Dame Sibyl Hathaway1:15

Do you play an instrument? No, I'm afraid I don't.

Presenter1:18

Do you play a record? Yes.

Presenter1:20

How did you set about choosing your eight discs for the island?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway1:24

Well, I'm afraid they're very nostalgic. They they're all connected with some part of my life or some interest I've had in people or things. What's the first one?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway1:33

Well, the first one is Mahla, the Daggetto, Mahler's Fifth Symphony, because I think it has everything. It is

Dame Sibyl Hathaway1:40

It isn't soothing and yet it would be stimulating and I feel it would just help me.

Presenter1:48

Part of the Adaggietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony, the New Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbie Raleigh. Let's go on to your second record. What's that to be?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway1:56

I would like the Gershwin the Repsdin Blue because it was one of my husband's favorite

Dame Sibyl Hathaway2:03

pieces of music and he was never tired of listening to it.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway2:06

I think he'd be meant something to him about America, conveyed America to him and conveyed and I think it is a thing that conveys great many sensations in one's life and it fits in with so much.

Presenter2:18

An excerpt from Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra conducted by Felix Slatkin. You of course have visited America on a number of occasions to lecture, haven't you?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway2:27

Oh yes, I've done three lecture tours, besides going out there on many other visits.

Presenter2:31

Yes, and talk to them about SOC. How big is SOC?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway2:35

Well, it's about 1200 acres, actually, variable acres. It has 42 miles of coastline.

Presenter2:41

Yes. How long is it?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway2:42

Well, the longest street you could say straight from end to end is three and a half miles and it's about a mile and a half wide.

Presenter2:48

Hmm.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway2:49

Is it the smallest of the Channel Islands? No, it's the fourth. There are two smaller ones. Are there any uninhabited ones? No, nothing but rocks. Even the smallest has a family on it.

Presenter2:59

Yes.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway2:59

Just one family. Yes.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway3:01

Now how did Sark come into your family's possession?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway3:03

Well my great-grandmother bought it uh when the then senior lost pretty well all his money in opening silver mines and trying to work them in eighteen forty something.

Presenter3:13

Yes. But before that you were a Channel Islands family.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway3:16

Oh yes, very much, Chan Rand family.

Presenter3:19

Your grandfather became seigneur, the ruler of the island, and then your father.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway3:22

Marketing other idea.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway3:24

Yeah.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway3:25

Were you brought up on Cirque? Oh yes, except for s being sent to school in France for a very short time. I was entirely brought up in Cirque.

Presenter3:32

Yes, and as well as learning modern French you learn to speak the Sorque patois.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway3:35

Please, that's my native tongue.

Presenter3:37

Yeah.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway3:37

Yes, a um a Norman, old Norman French. Very medieval sort of French, very much like the French they speak in Canada.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway3:43

When did you become Dame of Sahara? Yeah.

Presenter3:45

Uh

Dame Sibyl Hathaway3:45

In nineteen twenty seven my father died.

Presenter3:48

Since when has the island been under the British crown?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway3:51

Well, it we used to say it's always been under British crown because we are part of the Duchy of Normandy, the Channel Islands. Probably some of them went to help William the Conquer conquer England. We always win the

Dame Sibyl Hathaway4:02

Land in France was lost under King John, the Channel Islanders all remained loyal to the English crown as descendants of their duke.

Presenter4:09

Yes. But for a long, long time it was just a haunt of pirates, wasn't it?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway4:13

Yes, well, the Sarquas, anyway. There were monks in Orleans. There was there was a good deal of religious community and life in the six hundred and seven hundred period.

Presenter4:23

Yes. And when was the island properly colonized?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway4:27

Well, South was not really properly colonized until fifteen sixty five, when Queen Elizabeth authorized a a seigneur from Jersey to take over forty families and establish them in South for the defence of the island. Each man was to have a musket.

Presenter4:42

Yes. Are there many descendants of the original settlers on the island to day?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway4:46

Oh, yes. All the old names are there to this day. What's the total population? Five hundred and eighty two, our last census.

Presenter4:53

When you left home.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway4:54

Yeah.

Presenter4:55

And of course you'll know them all.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway4:57

Uh

Presenter4:57

Uh

Dame Sibyl Hathaway4:57

Oh yeah.

Presenter4:59

Agriculture, fishing and hotels are a prosperous island. Very prosperous, but never in the

Dame Sibyl Hathaway5:04

All right, I'm glad.

Presenter5:05

Good. How far is Ark from Guernsey?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway5:06

Uh

Dame Sibyl Hathaway5:07

Um six miles as the crow flies, it's nine miles round to the harbour.

Presenter5:10

Yes. And uh a regular daily service.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway5:13

Well, we have a regular we have a service twice a day in the summer and then there's just one cargo boat in the winter.

Presenter5:18

Yes, I know that it's rather

Dame Sibyl Hathaway5:20

Yeah.

Presenter5:20

Treacherous sea round Sarka, are you often cut off?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway5:23

By bad weather? Oh, very, very seldom. Perhaps for forty-eight hours at the very most, because they can always get across after all between tides.

Presenter5:30

Yes.

Presenter5:31

Let's have your third record. What's that to be?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway5:34

Well, my third record I'm going to choose

Dame Sibyl Hathaway5:37

A great friend of mine, Florence Easton, she was a Canadian metropolitan opera singer and she used to come and stay with me in Sark and if I would feel that if I was in my desert island I'd like to think of people who'd been with me in Sark and that I could hear their voices again.

Presenter5:51

What are you singing?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway5:53

Songs My Mother Taught Me by Borzak.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway5:56

I think that that lovely voice is shown to its best in a very simple song.

Presenter6:02

Florence Easton.

Presenter6:04

To what extent does Sark rely on Guernsey administratively?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway6:08

Well, we rely on advice from the Crown officers such as the bailiff and the attorney general and solicitor general in Guernsey, but we're not in any way under the states of Guernsey. They don't their laws don't apply to us, their taxation doesn't apply to us.

Presenter6:21

Yeah.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway6:22

We have our own parliament.

Presenter6:24

The Court of Chief Pleas. Yes.

Presenter6:26

Now that Parliament makes recommendations to you, but you have the final say.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway6:31

Well, no. I'm not uh as sort of feudal person as they think I am, and they very often like to say in the papers, nothing of the kind. I'm subject to my own laws. Um I have only the form of veto which can hold back a law.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway6:47

for something like forty days, for reconsideration.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway6:51

So that's

Dame Sibyl Hathaway6:53

Vinny.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway6:54

democratic really. It gives people time for reconsideration, but it's not a final thing and I'm subject in every way to any laws that have been made by the chief, please.

Presenter7:04

You do have certain feudal rights, Dan Serb. Um you have a levy on all the cereal crops and a percentage on sales of property. And I believe until recently each islander was supposed to give you two days' work a year.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway7:19

Oh, well, he gave two days, not to me, to the roads, to the repair of the roads, but now that's done by a tax.

Presenter7:24

Mm-hmm.

Presenter7:25

Now there's no income tax, no death duties.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway7:29

No, no, no, nothing of that sort. No, we only have one tax, and it really is a rate, and it's only for the maintenance of our poor.

Presenter7:36

Yeah.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway7:36

And we have very, very few poor. These are only the very infirm and old that have to be cared for in hospital.

Presenter7:41

You don't admit tax avoiders as new residents.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway7:44

We don't and certainly don't encourage them. It's difficult for them because uh well there are no properties for sale and everybody has to get my consent before they can buy and there are restrictions on building.

Speaker 17:54

Yeah.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway7:56

Can women earn property? Oh, certainly, certainly. Women are well taken care of. We haven't got a divorce law and we haven't got a Woman's Property Act, but we do have a law which forbids any man to sell his property without the consent of his wife. And furthermore, she's entitled to a third of his house and his garden and his farm and everything. No one can deprive her of that.

Presenter8:19

Mm-hmm.

Presenter8:21

Sark, in common with the other Channel Islands, was occupied by the Germans during the last war. You refused evacuation and you stayed to deal with the situation.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway8:29

Yes?

Presenter8:30

You dealt with the occupying forces on on behalf of the islanders.

Presenter8:33

Apart from obvious shortages and restrictions, were there any major troubles during the occupation?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway8:39

Well, hardly troubles, but there was great hardships, you know, when they deported something like sixty of our people for no apparent reason whatsoever. People up to sixty years of age, and even women with quite young children were taken, babies in arms almost.

Presenter8:53

Your late husband was taken into Germany last

Dame Sibyl Hathaway8:55

Yes, he was two and a half years in a in a camp down on borders of Austria.

Presenter9:00

When the day of liberation eventually came, did the Germans hold out to the end? Was there a lot of thought about it?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway9:04

South was the very last place liberated. It was two days after Guernsey and uh we had two hundred and seventy five Germans in the island then. There were thirty thousand in the Channel Islands.

Presenter9:13

Yes, but they didn't defend it to the utter

Dame Sibyl Hathaway9:14

Oh, no, no. There was no sabotage or anything of that sort.

Presenter9:18

Do any of the X occupied

Dame Sibyl Hathaway9:20

Occupyers come over now as visitors.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway9:22

Oh yes, very often, especially the doctors, because we had to rely on the German doctors. Our doctor

Dame Sibyl Hathaway9:28

Windor

Dame Sibyl Hathaway9:30

abandoned uh all of us and went off when they took the people away from the lighthouse.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway9:35

The English collected all the lighthouse keepers, you see, before the Germans arrived.

Presenter9:38

Yeah.

Speaker 39:38

But

Dame Sibyl Hathaway9:39

And the doctor went too. And the doctor went too, and we had nobody at all.

Presenter9:39

And the doctor went to the

Dame Sibyl Hathaway9:43

And so I had to appeal to the German doctors to take care of our people, which is a common thing in the civil occupation. And they were very considerate. They did a great deal for us.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway9:54

Let's have record number four. What's that?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway9:57

And uh number four, I would like to dance to the hours because it's very cheerful and I'm sure I should love it on a desert island.

Presenter10:04

The Dance of the Ars from La Jaconda

Presenter10:07

Herbert von Garyan conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Presenter10:10

Octag has a a great horde of tourists every year, doesn't it?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway10:14

Yes, we had I think about between forty and forty-two thousand this year.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway10:18

which was very good considering the weather in August was bad.

Speaker 310:21

Yeah.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway10:22

How many of em stay?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway10:24

Oh, the hotels are quite full. There are about five hotels and they're booked from year to year by people who return for the quiet life they get in Zagre.

Presenter10:32

Yes, but most of them

Dame Sibyl Hathaway10:33

Most of them are gay people who come over from Guernsey or by hydrofoil from Jersey.

Presenter10:38

Yeah.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway10:38

They're all gone by five o'clock in the afternoon. The island is completely quiet.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway10:42

Do they come from France as well? Uh only by hydropoil. They come from St. Malo, there's a twice a week service.

Presenter10:50

Now you have always forbidden, as you're entitled to forbid, motor cars on the island, but there are now getting on for fifty tractors, which is far more surely than can be needed for agricultural work. Aren't those tractors being used to get round your edict?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway11:04

Well, I'm afraid they are. Uh there are forty four now and I really do feel that uh it's more than we should have for the size of the island.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway11:12

It's become a

Dame Sibyl Hathaway11:13

sort of uh social standing to have your tractor for your business, wh whether your business really necessitates it or not.

Presenter11:22

There have been occasional rumblings of of discontent, rumblings of of revolution among the Sark people, um that your rule is is dictatorship and art moted and they they don't need you to tell them whether they can have tractors or not. Is there

Dame Sibyl Hathaway11:37

Is there a demand for change?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway11:38

Well, it doesn't seem to be. Every time anything comes up in the chief pleas that uh is in any way changed, such as divorce or being allowed to have female dogs or any of those things in the island, they always vote against it. They never seem to want anything changed, and I think they're very sensible because they've realised that to keep the island as it is is its greatest attraction and the surest thing for the future to have a prosperous island.

Presenter12:02

Yes, so you see Ireland staying as it is, a small agricultural paradise, um and no chance of it becoming a concrete island full of casinos and holiday hotels.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway12:11

Oh no, certainly not. It'll never come back in my time anyway.

Presenter12:15

Well, record number five, please, Dancival.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway12:18

Well, record number five is a debucy, a nice soothing

Dame Sibyl Hathaway12:22

Did you see Tapios Verdela?

Presenter12:26

Jibusi's The Girl with Flaxen Hair played by Keysicking. Let's go straight on to your next record. Watch that.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway12:33

Well, it's the Piernais Aubard, played by my friend Léon Gusens, who also was a very devoted visitor to the island of Sark.

Presenter12:44

Leon Gusens playing.

Presenter12:45

Pierre Nez Bobard.

Presenter12:48

Now, Dame Sybil, we'll try to make your stay as a castaway as comfortable as possible. Um it's a pity there aren't any uninhabited islands near Sark.

Presenter12:57

Uh could you look after yourself? Oh, I'm sure I could. I'm used to doing that.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway13:01

Fish? Oh, certainly. And obviously you can handle a small boat. Yes, a small boat. I skip.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway13:07

Would you try to escape?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway13:08

Well, not if there are any sharks about. It all depends where the island was.

Presenter13:12

I think we'll put it near enough for some one to come and fetch him.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway13:15

Oh, or somewhere where I could swim, perhaps.

Presenter13:17

Yes, you are a very strong swimmer, I believe.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway13:19

Really?

Presenter13:20

Let's have record number seven.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway13:22

Well, record number seven is

Dame Sibyl Hathaway13:25

Noel Card singing his song Matlow.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway13:28

I've always been

Dame Sibyl Hathaway13:29

terribly conscious of the period of my life in which Noel Card was everything. I never missed a play of his or

Dame Sibyl Hathaway13:37

Everywhere one went one heard his music and it was a part of my life which spent a good deal in London at that time and and I would love to be able to bring it back to me while I was alone on a desert island.

Presenter13:48

Earl Card singing his own song, Mattelo, which brings us now to our last record.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway13:53

Well, I should like to have Ernest laugh.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway13:57

Singing

Dame Sibyl Hathaway13:58

O for the wings of a dove.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway14:00

I actually heard him sing it myself many years ago.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway14:04

And I think it would be terribly relaxing and satisfying and make me feel happy, if one could be really happy on totally alone on an island. But anyhow, it would comfort me, I think.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway14:16

And it was things one would never get tired of.

Presenter14:21

Ernest Love and the Choir of the Temple Church, London.

Presenter14:25

If you could take just one of the eight records you played as, which would it be?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway14:30

I think it would be the Marla.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway14:33

Because that has something of everything, all one's emotions, I think.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway14:39

are contained in that.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway14:41

And it would be the most satisfying one to have.

Presenter14:44

And one luxury to take with you?

Dame Sibyl Hathaway14:46

Well, I would ask for lots of canvas and tapestry walls, so that I could go on.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway14:51

doing a sort of bio tapestry on my own, and if I got bored with it I could take it to pieces and do it over again.

Presenter14:56

Yes, a bio tapestry will walk the history of sark.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway14:59

Well, I might well do that, or my own life.

Presenter15:02

Yes. You've written your own life and I believe you're about to write a history of Zarga.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway15:06

Uh yes, so uh more or less

Dame Sibyl Hathaway15:09

casual history, not not theoretically researched one.

Presenter15:14

And one book to take to the island with you apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which are already there.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway15:19

Well, I like reading history better than anything.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway15:22

And I should like I think

Dame Sibyl Hathaway15:25

Sir Keith Feeling's history of England.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway15:29

Which is quite atm.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway15:31

And I think that would satisfy me for a long time.

Presenter15:34

Saki feelings History of England

Presenter15:37

Right, and thank you, Dame Sybil Hathaway, Dame of Sark, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway15:43

Thank you very much for being interested in SARS.

Presenter15:46

Goodbye everyone.

Speaker 315:56

The guest in today's programme was Dame Sybil Hathaway.

Speaker 316:00

The interviewer was Roy Plumley and the producer Ronald Cook.

Speaker 316:05

Next Monday at 12.25 the Castaway will be the author and broadcaster C. A. Joyce.

Dame Sibyl Hathaway16:31

Yeah.